


if you were church i'd get down on my knees

by womanaction



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, half hurt/comfort half character study, s7 mostly immediately pre-chosen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 22:05:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18949564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanaction/pseuds/womanaction
Summary: Spike considers how he got here.





	if you were church i'd get down on my knees

There are no barriers between them anymore. No rules except one unspoken: “don’t say it.”

“I adore you,” Spike says carefully.

This is apparently acceptable.

“I need you,” she whispers one night, suddenly.

This is not news to him.

 

The history of his last five fucking years in this hellhole could be told in terms of watching Buffy.

First, surveying Buffy. Stalking her like the prey she might have been, if not for Calling and divine intervention and a dozen other things above his head, theologically speaking. And maybe literally, considering Hell really was under their feet all this time. Funny that, something his priest had actually gotten right back in the day.

Then, leering. Big-Bad-ing all over the place, pelvic thrusts in her direction and all that. Hadn’t thought that much of it at the time, the fact that he wanted her. Of course he wanted her, but in a simple way, the kind that only rarely made him consider postponing killing her just…to get…a little more.

After that came noticing. Really noticing. Not that there was much else for him to do. Chains aren’t too exciting when the jailer is a former librarian with shit taste in television instead of, well, her. That was when the scales tipped, when the time he spent watching her in his mind’s eye surpassed the time in her presence. And he was always hungry for more of the latter, even though he hadn’t accepted why.

It wasn’t until he knew that he really saw her. Saw more than Slayer or girl to the strange mix within. Saw past her little gestures and quirks to what they meant, caught every aside glance and micro-expression, memorized her every step and sway and kick and marveled at how new she seemed every day.

Last year he studied her like his life depended on it. Scrutinized her every move, looking once again for weaknesses, but this time to keep her around instead of getting rid of her. Sometimes he felt he could see right through her, like there was so little Buffy left she might just disappear. Well, and then she did, but she got better, and better and better until, well, she didn’t need him anymore.

Now? Now he full-on poetically fucking _beholds_ her. In retrospect, it used to be like looking through a dirty window, squinting to see her brightness within. Now against all odds, he’s within her private sanctuary, bathed in her light and shadow.

And God help him, he still wants more.

 

He kisses the words up and down her distracted skin. _“I love you,”_ his hands brush blonde hair off her busy neck. _“I love you,”_ he winds his fingers through hers. _“I love you,”_ as she sighs against him with something that’s not quite need and not quite want.

He used to think this was _having_ her. Funny, that. Eventually he realized the folly in that, but he still believed on some level that if he just kept at it he’d have her, for real. Now he knows better, but he also knows it’s as close as he’s gonna get and besides, he won’t leave the girl wanting. His own wanting is a trickier beast to tame, but when she moans against him it’s enough of a distraction.

“William,” she says, and his skin pricks. The last time she’d called him that was to unmake him, turn him back into a pumpkin so to speak.

He glances up at her face, afraid of what he’ll see, but it’s all bliss and curved lips. He considers as he dives back in with more vigor that maybe the same words that turned him to monster can make him man again.

 

It can only last so long, even with their shared superhuman stamina.

Afterward, she cries. He doesn’t ask her if it’s about him – partly because he doesn’t really want to know, and partly because it’s a bloody stupid question on this the eve of their destruction. He’s been told he’s a selfish bloke, but that would be a step too far even for his level of self-absorption.

Still feels a bit guilty, though. Damn that soul.

Instead he coils himself around her, pressing kisses to her brow. “I know,” he says. He does, and he doesn’t, and there’s not a fucking thing either one of them can do about it anyway. “I know, love.”

He wants to say, “I’d die for you,” but he’s not sure that’s what she wants to hear and anyway, she already knows (maybe some of those tears are for him already - she doesn’t love him, but he must be worth one or two at least). He wants to kiss those tears away, but he can’t remember if that’s an impulse coming from the monster or the man and he can’t stand her looking at him like that again. He wants to crack a joke, a terrible Xander-quality one even, if it’ll make her smile again for even a second. He wants and wants and wants till her sobbing finally subsides and he finds himself slipping into sleep against his will.

 

He dreams about her, in the sunshine. The light is beautiful and deadly and definitely not a thinly veiled metaphor for everything he can never have with her. Once a poet, always a poet, he supposes, and slips his jacket on. _Time to go be heroes._

**Author's Note:**

> This procrastination fic brought to you by my dissertation prospectus.
> 
> I don't really subscribe to the "Spuffy banged before the events of Chosen" but this was in my head begging to be written.


End file.
